


here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road

by coalitiongirl_ficlets (coalitiongirl)



Series: awkward idiots [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 20:30:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1661465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl_ficlets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Emma is the baby whisperer and the only one to calm the new Charming baby down. What they don't realize is that she still has Regina's memories in the back of her head, so she uses the same techniques to calm down her new baby brother that Regina used on Henry, and it isn't until Henry passes the kid to Emma in front of Regina that they figure it out.</p><p>A prequel of sorts to <span class="u">so does this make us both the other woman?</span>, but can easily be read without it. Just pretend the last ten minutes or so of the finale never happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road

It takes two nights before she hears the crying from downstairs suddenly joined by a second set of tears, louder and considerably more adult, and Henry’s over for the weekend and he whispers, “Don’t you think that we should help?” 

And  _yeah_ , maybe, even though there’s still that part of her that shudders whenever she’s too close to the baby and her mother together, when Snow starts talking about firsts with Leo so much that she wants to be a child again, crying and screaming that  _it isn’t fair_ , she could have had this all and it isn’t fair.

She winds up at Regina’s house more often than not on those days under the guise of visiting Henry. At first she thinks she’d just wanted to have someone else to blame for it all, someone else to be angry at instead of Snow. But then Regina had looked at her with eyes that have seen too much of her and she’d remembered holding a knife to Regina’s throat and telling Cora to choose her daughter or a dagger and the hostility all just…fades.

Regina gets not coming first, and loving too much to stop. Regina gets  _her_ , and she feels all kinds of warmth at the thought of her co-parent that she rarely dwells upon. They’re kind of friends now, maybe. It’s weird.

She sighs and stretches out in bed, mutters, “Yeah, I guess we should, right?” and gets up and staggers for the stairs.

Snow is rocking Leo right underneath the stairs like she’d been expecting Emma to come, and she thinks she’d be annoyed by it if not for the fact that Snow’s face is stained with tears and Leo is howling like he’s gotten a head start on teething. “ _Help_ ,” she manages, thrusting the baby at her. “I’m just not good at this. I don’t know how to calm him down.”

“Shh,” Emma croons automatically, cradling Leo against her and feeling a wave of sympathy for her mother. She remembers Henry’s first few weeks in her false memories, remembers frustration and being alone and having no idea what she’s doing wrong. Remembers tears of her own, even though the memories are all but faded now, like another lifetime ago. “You just need to find his happy place.” 

She tickles the spot between Leo’s shoulders that had always calmed Henry and sways back and forth until the baby is quiet again, snuffling in her arms and fast asleep. “Trust me, no one magically becomes a mother in a couple of days. Even weeks.”

Snow is still watching her with teary eyes, and she murmurs, “Get some sleep. I’ve got this.”

+

She’s swiftly assigned to daytime baby duty when it becomes clear that she’s the only one who can calm Leo down. “It’s not that I don’t want to help out,” she tells Regina, balancing Leo in one arm and trying for the bearclaw with the other. “I just have a  _job_.”

“You seem to be managing nicely,” Regina observes. The baby jerks at the wrong moment and gets a faceful of sticky sugar. To her credit, Regina doesn’t laugh, but her eyes are glinting with a sadistic kind of humor that says plenty about how she’s enjoying this. Emma has no idea why she even _likes_ this evil, evil woman. “I hear you chased three of the Lost Boys off Old Mrs. Muffet’s property by threatening to make them change the baby’s diaper.”

“One of my greatest moments in law enforcement, second only to that dragon.” She bites down on her bearclaw and is pleased to discover that it doesn’t taste like Leo’s face. Leo, however, may taste like a bearclaw. Lucky for him, really.

Regina retrieves some wet tissues from the station bathroom and scrubs his face, businesslike. “Please. You didn’t even manage to kill the dragon. I had to send your boyfriend after it afterward.”

She winces, because that impromptu kiss at the diner after Zelena had been defeated had been…stupid. Incredibly so. And had had absolutely nothing to do with the way that Regina had been sucking face with that asshole Robin Hood like she’d picked up a new family in the five minutes since they’d been back in Storybrooke. Now Hook is asking her out every time he sees her and is lurking at Granny’s all the time and everyone else in the universe seems to be pushing her toward him.

Everyone but Regina, whose lips are curled with distaste and Emma has to insist, “He isn’t my boyfriend.”

“Sooner or later, he will be.” She says it with such grimness that Emma grins and shoves away the discomfort that that surety brings.

“I don’t think I’ll ever like him as much as I like you,” she teases, if only because it makes Regina’s head snap up and her cheeks flush and her eyes regard her with confusion.

And maybe it’s a tiny bit true. Ha. What has her life become.

+

Leo is red-faced and screaming when she stops by to get dressed for dinner at Regina’s- Regina draws the line somewhere even for her, and she’d had an encounter with a rabid dog in the dumpster behind Tiana’s restaurant this afternoon that would get her booted from Mifflin Street if she dares come by like this- and Snow pleads. “Emma.  _Please_.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” She strokes Leo’s neck and tries to keep him away from the garbage still caked against her arms. “I’ll take him to Regina’s with me. Just let me shower first.”

She can hear him crying again when she’s toweling off and Snow saying, “I’m doing the exact same thing as Emma! Those memories aren’t even real!” and she can hear that pitch of her voice, higher than she’s ever heard it before. 

Snow White is close to breaking point and she thinks she should probably let Regina know, just in case she wants to watch.

+

“Are you sure he’s not teething?” Henry says helplessly. He’s curled up on the couch, rocking with Leo, who’s already sensed that he’s been handed off to someone else and is howling in protest.

“Nah, I don’t think so.” She pops a finger in Leo’s mouth, and he sucks hard for a few seconds before he starts crying again. “Just colic. It happens.”

“You had some of the worst colic I’ve ever seen,” Regina comments from the opposite couch. “I don’t think I slept through the night once for the first six months of your life.”

“Me neither,” Emma agrees with a curious glance at Regina. “Babies are like that, I guess.” No matter the memories, enough of it is going to overlap with little kids. “Ready to give up?” 

She stretches out her arms to take Leo, and Henry shakes his head. “Not yet!” His eyes glint with sudden opportunity, still two steps ahead of her, as always. “You clear the table, I’ll calm him down.” 

“What? That’s not fair!” 

“Seems reasonable to me,” Regina says, her lips twitching. “You don’t want to set a bad example for your son, do you?”

She huffs a little and stalks over to the dining room, keeping an eye on Henry in the next room. He’s normally good with Leo, except for moments like this where Leo gets into one of his crying jags and no one but Emma can save the day. Which is…nice, kind of. There’s a part of her that isn’t all that opposed to having a little brother, to getting to raise a baby like she’d never really gotten a chance to with Henry. And short of her miraculously falling in love with Hook and deciding to build a family with him on the Jolly Roger, she thinks that Leo might be her last chance to try that, this irrational sibling rivalry aside.

“Mom?” Henry says over the screaming, and she looks up automatically before she remembers that they’re trying out new names now for simplicity’s sake. Now she’s  _Ma_ , and  _Mom_  is the woman sitting opposite Henry, regarding him with wariness. “Can you help me out?”

“I don’t know,” Regina says, shifting uncomfortably, and Emma remembers that she hasn’t seen Regina actually hold Leo even once. She doesn’t blame her, if all her suspicions about Regina’s marriage into the family are true, and Regina’s just skittish enough around Leo to confirm them. “Emma, why don’t you–“

But Henry’s saying, “Come on, Mom, we don’t need Ma for this,” and Regina is as incapable at saying no to Henry now as she’s been for years. She sits beside him almost timidly, and Emma sets down her pile of plates and watches as she lifts up the baby, stroking a finger to the back of his neck and swaying with him in a sharply familiar way.

She freezes and stares, flashes of memories so bright in her mind. Henry screaming, day in and day out, until she’d been crying herself to exhaustion at night just as much as he. Visiting the pediatrician, begging for a reprieve. Pacifiers and shiny toys and bouncing in place with him and  _nothing,_ not until the moment she’d tried rubbing the space between his shoulders and found the exact rhythm combined with that that would calm him. 

It’s her memory with Henry, but it’s suddenly clear from the way that Regina is holding Leo that it’s not that at all.

Regina looks up and sees her open mouth and wet eyes, and they stare at each other for a long moment before Regina says, “Henry, why don’t you run upstairs and finish up your homework?”

+

“I didn’t know,” she says finally, sinking down on the couch beside Regina. Leo is napping peacefully in the other woman’s arms like he only ever does in hers, peaceful at last, and she can’t stop staring at him. This is how it really went, when Regina and Henry had only each other. This is the real story.

“I didn’t either,” Regina admits. “Not until I saw you with Two Point Oh here. I’d tried…I’d thought about it right before the curse, but it was all vague concepts of  _happy_ and  _love_. I wanted you to have the best of us. The best of me.”

She doesn’t know if she wants to smile or cry. “You didn’t just give me happy memories and Henry. You gave me  _you_.” It’s all the goodness that’s strong within Regina, ten years of love strong enough to transform someone dark and bitter into this magnificent woman who’s still soft enough to love. Fierce enough to fight. Whole enough to give. “You trusted me with that?”

Regina’s eyes are bright and she’s looking at Emma like she’s important, like she matters in ways beyond just a title slapped on at birth or her blood ties. “You’ve trusted me with more than that before,” she says, and Emma thinks about  _she’s not dying_ and  _you want to run this show? run it_ and  _I invited her_ and yeah, she kind of has. Believing in Regina has been her default for so long that she can’t remember a time before it.

And Regina, in return, had given her the most precious gift she’d ever been handed.  _A happy ending_. And as much as it’s gone now, exchanged for duty once more, sometimes in this house, with this family, she wonders if she might be able to find it again. (And then Robin comes back with guarded eyes that seem to know exactly what she’s thinking and it shatters in a flash.)

She wants to thank her, to talk to her about it all and Henry and what this means for them both. She wants to hold Leo with her like they both remember holding Henry and to dream for a moment about family again. She wants to fall to her knees in front of her and cradle Regina’s face in her hands and…

Oh, god, she wants to kiss her.

She rears back and Regina blinks at her, almost hurt at the movement. “Emma?” she says, and Emma can’t stop staring at her mouth as it forms her name, can’t stop picturing herself lurching forward and swiping Regina’s lips with her tongue, wrapping her in her arms and fusing them together and _thanking_ Regina, really thanking her in the best possible way.

And this is ridiculous, because Regina is attractive and maybe she’s imagined  _fucking_ her before and working off some of that tension, but this is something else entirely. This is lips and fingers and hearts displayed for the world to see, and the kind of longing that comes with this desire is terrifying and overwhelming,  _toomuchtoomuch_ and Emma doesn’t know how long she’s wanted this but it couldn’t have started today. Not with how deep it goes.

She can’t feel this much because her chest might explode and Regina is with that asshole Robin Hood (who’s never been anything other than polite to her, actually, and is  _this_ what her instinctive dislike is all about? Fuck, is this why she kissed Hook that night she’d found out about them?) and it all feels so immense, like the first time she’d looked up at the stars and thought about how tiny she is. Like the first time she’d touched the universe and understood how much is before her if she only reaches for it.

“I…uh. I just remembered something I have to take of,” she says. She takes Leo from the other woman, shivering at the touch of Regina’s skin grazing hers. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Tell Henry I said goodnight.” 

“Emma,” Regina repeats, like she doesn’t understand what’s going on at all. And she  _doesn’t._ She can’t ever understand this. She’s so happy and Emma would ruin it in an instant, complicate something that she doesn’t belong within.

She arranges a still-peaceful Leo in his stroller and manages to wave goodbye before she starts walking, heading nowhere at all except away from this new overpowering pounding in her chest that she doesn’t dare contemplate.

She makes it all the way to Granny’s before she’s breathing properly, and when she glimpses a flash of black leather and a metal hook through the window, it looks like her salvation. Like the practical, right decision that won’t leave her gasping with the immensity of that depth of feeling.

She parks the stroller outside the diner, drapes Leo against her shoulder, and pushes open the door.


End file.
